|
Embroidery
Camping out on this side of the sphinx,
crisscrossed
by vinyl-coated hardware
interface wires, dotted
with toggles
flipped to the magnet side of the
sky,
we overreach the magic of electricity,
we techies of the twenty-first century.
Even so, I like to imagine your hands
upon
my face, both of them the smoky
gray shade of
silicon dioxide, darkened
by the virtual sun
of the LED for so
long that silicon and plastic
encase us
like black varnish on desert sandstone.
I like to think this binary landscape
is
body-friendly, but my mouth is
parched as we
set up camp beside
the pixel-sphinx and trek
for days
through protocols, through .ftp and
.html, looking for that code of codes.
I dream this is the desert sand burning
my
eyes, not my own blinkless stare
into a faceless
light twenty-two inches
from a nose that no
longer remembers
the scent of roses or other
embroideries
of flower, food, and human pheromones.
When logic fails, our program looping
back
upon itself, what Happy Fall to
leave the riddle
of the oroborus behind.
Miriam, Bitter Sea
Is this the only body that counts now,
these
disarticulated bones of the skull
stripped of
flesh, fitted with sockets?
One technology supplanting
the last,
the plow rusting in a virtual field
now,
dead steel jacked into a state of pure
will to power, forging the thought of
something
new under an old, old sun.
However fresh-seeming such desire,
this
old CPU is bound to a green sea,
bound
to taste the bitter, salty foam,
ever swimming
toward a shifting beach,
breathing in the deep
organic language
as familiar as the soil, the
sky, the water,
this flood of nostalgia for
a garden free
of apples, fig leaves, and original
sin.
Sin of the Cyborg
I would the universe to gather,
a celebration
of apples
eaten hungrily two by two,
women
feasting together,
a glut of tooth marks,
men facing their bodies
untouched
by fig leaves,
and each testing knowledge,
the difference between
the sin
of an empty mouth
and the earned innocence
of once-dormant seeds
spit from
sated lips
to the rich black loam,
strong
roots snaking
into rain-soaked ground,
and leaves shooting up
as fast as
a star can
explode into the white
light
of apple blossoms.
Job, Fresh from Cyberspace
Rich in naked finery you fall
fresh from
apotheosis
back to your tribe on earth.
Here you are more welcome
than any starry
eye
of the maker's face,
that
face the trick of
a long-dead science,
the alchemy of
a jealous old
sadist
with a head too big
to
be photographed,
blowing tornadoes
to
gyre honest folk
toward cold
pasteboard stars.
When he makes wondrous lies
of his awful
disembodiment,
you believe
him,
accord him your own
generous
intelligence,
ask your progeny
to
do likewise,
a continued charity,
this
gift of generations
to a beggar thought
still hungering
for your fine
blood and bones.
|
